Two years after the intifada erupted, the Palestinians appear to have lost the war on the political and diplomatic levels, but Israel has not won it yet, since the cycle of violence continues, with no solution shaping up.
The plight of Yasser Arafat, trapped with his entourage in his crumbling Ramallah office, again besieged by the Israeli army, tragically summarises what the Palestinians and their leader are left with after 24 months of conflict.
Most of the autonomous areas in the West Bank have been reoccupied by the army since mid-June, and those which haven’t are raided daily by tanks and troops continuing their sweep for what is left of hardline Palestinian militants.
The Palestinian economy is in tatters, the daily life of the population in the occupied territories has become a nightmare and the death toll keeps soaring, with already more than 1 850 Palestinians and just over 600 Israelis killed over the past two years.
In the course of events which led from September 2000, when the Palestinians launched their second intifada, or uprising, following the failure of the Camp David summit, to the current situation, the major turning point was the September 11 attacks against the United States.
”I think September 11 did change the atmosphere in favour of the Israeli position,” says Israeli analyst Ephraim Kam.
”Most governments, especially the US administration, but also European governments, accept Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism,” he explains.
This ”freedom of action” granted to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government and the new level of ”understanding” for the army’s operations in the Palestinian territories are the main Israeli gains of this past year.
The Palestinians also contributed to Israel’s strength by failing to adapt to the new rules of the game, deplores Palestinian political analyst Ali Jerbawi.
”We didn’t realise the magnitude of that event on world politics,” he says. ”The intifada should have continued, but we should have learnt our lessons from September 11, grasped the consequences of that and immediately stopped attacks inside Israel.”
But in the following months, suicide bombings were instead stepped up and turned into a relentless campaign, which came to symbolise the intifada for the Israelis and climaxed on March 27 with the so-called ”Passover massacre” that left 29 people dead in the coastal resort of Netanya.
The attack by the Islamist group Hamas, the bloodiest single suicide bombing since the beginning of the intifada, triggered a huge military operation in the West Bank and a first full reoccupation of autonomous Palestinian areas.
Arafat repeatedly condemned the attacks but never managed, or maybe wanted, to halt them, prompting George Bush to call for his ouster last June, the US president even making it a condition for the creation of a Palestinian state.
The drive to dump the veteran leader was kicked off by his arch-rival Sharon, who declared as early as December 2001 that he was ”irrelevant” and that Israel would seek new partners for any future dialogue.
Although he has not officially rejected them, the hardline Israeli premier recently said the 1993 Oslo accords -? the foundation of the Middle East peace process — were dead.
And on the ground, the army has tried very hard to erase every trace of the agreements, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or its leader, whom the right-wing Israeli government is now seeking to expel.
As the military crackdown on Palestinian militant groups got tougher, the Israeli leadership has almost openly claimed victory and admitted that its goal was nothing less than unconditional Palestinian surrender.
But the recent resumption of suicide attacks after a short lull is only the latest proof that the intifada is still alive and that a definitive victory by the Jewish state is a long way down the road.
”What the Israelis have achieved is deepening the hatred among the Palestinians and the Arabs against them,” warns Palestinian analyst Zacharia al-Qaq. ”I don’t see any solution on the horizon.”
Kam also thinks the prospects are just as gloomy and argues that the intifada will continue ”as long as there is no political process.” – Sapa-AFP